Ongoing developments in the use of continuation-bifurcation methodology at AgustaWestland

Abstract

The use of continuation and bifurcation methods in the assessment of stability allows for a complete non-linear stability picture to be gained and also allows for rapid exploration of a multi-parameter space which can be much more efficient than using traditional techniques. In recent years AgustaWestland, the University of Bristol and the Politecnico di Milano have jointly produced and validated interfaces between a well-validated off-the-shelf continuation and bifurcation tool and various in-house AgustaWestland aeroelasticity tools. One piece of software which has been successfully coupled to the tool is the Modern Aeroservoelastic State-Space Tools developed at the Politecnico di Milano. The Modern Aeroservoelastic State-Space Tool is a suite of tools developed in the Matlab/Simulink environment providing the ability to rapidly assemble a complex non-linear dynamic system in the state-space form allowing for the multi-disciplinary study of aeroservoelastic stability and control. The main focus of this paper is to demonstrate the maturity of the tool using as an example its first practical application which contributed evidence towards the latest Release-To-Service of the AW159/Wildcat. Whilst this study does not use the full potential of the continuation and bifurcation methods, it clearly demonstrates the maturity of a non-linear stability analysis capability at AgustaWestland allowing it to be integrated into the every-day suite of tools available to the dynamics engineers.